Protect your privacy!

I received this email today and having already read the google privacy policy changes was glad that there was a way to protect my privacy. I thought perhaps you would like to have your web browsing history protected too so I thought I would post the email and the link for how to change you privacy settings.Hope it's helpful!

In just a few hours, new policies will take effect at Google, endangering your privacy.
Tech publication Gizmodo reports, "things you could do in relative anonymity today [like your web searches], will be explicitly associated with your name, your face, your phone number come March 1st." And this applies retro-actively if you don't act today. 
You can protect yourself in just 1 minute! Click here for a step-by-step guide to protecting your privacy from Google's changes. 

The state of the union

I dropped by Michael Offutt's blog today and read his post on the "Pixação" (you should go check it out if you haven't yet) which brought up some rather interesting discussion on political protests. Then I stopped by Rusty's over at The Blutonian Death Egg and he said, "I’m pretty sure that upper management types at large corporations and people that hold high ranking political positions (Senators, Congressmen, etc) are sociopaths." Which reminded me of a song that seems more relevant today than it was when it was originally recorded. Anyway, thought I would post it, along with the words and let you say what you have to say.

Padded with power here they come 

International loan sharks backed by the guns 

Of market hungry military profiteers 

Whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared 

With the blood of the poor
 

Who rob life of its quality 

Who render rage a necessity 

By turning countries into labour camps 

Modern slavers in drag as 

champions of freedom
 

Sinister cynical instrument 

Who makes the gun into a sacrament -- 

The only response to the deification 

Of tyranny by so-called "developed" nations' 

Idolatry of ideology

North South East West 

Kill the best and buy the rest 

It's just spend a buck to make a buck 

You don't really give a flying fuck 

About the people in misery

IMF dirty MF 

Takes away everything it can get 

Always making certain that there's one thing left 

Keep them on the hook 

with insupportable debt

See the paid-off local bottom feeders 

Passing themselves off as leaders 

Kiss the ladies shake hands with the fellows 

Open for business like a cheap bordello

And they call it democracy And they call it democracy 

And they call it democracy And they call it democracy

See the loaded eyes of the children too 

Trying to make the best of it the way kids do 

One day you're going to rise from your habitual feast 

To find yourself staring down the throat of the beast 

They call the revolution

IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get 

Always making certain that there's one thing left 

Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt  

How many more do I need to join???

So I got this email today... Hello, someone liked your blog at http://conch-to-be.blogspot.com and sent you an invitation to http://purebloggers.com . Pure Bloggers is a social-network for bloggers and companies. Need more traffic? Want to sell Bannerspace or links? Offer services at your blog? Want to get more readers? Or just share experiences with other bloggers? Get in touch with 1000s of Companies and Bloggers! http://purebloggers.com is the right place for you. Sign up for free now and join the biggest blogger and companies network!
 Have you gotten it? If so, (or even if not) why do I want it or care? I mean yet ANOTHER social network? I joined bloggers networking thingy sometime ago and the "friends" I make there are not even visiting my real blog! I am on Twitter and have a LinkedIn account. What does that do for me? I have friends on Goodreads (which fortunately has the benefit of helping me keep track of my library although I should enter more of them) But what is the point? To get me to sign up for more stuff so that more companies can track whatever I am interested in or buying?? I don't buy (haha! I don't buy it!) that it's connecting me to more readers anymore. I don't think if I add Facebook to my list of "I-should-have-my-smiling-face-here-too!" websites that I'll be that much more connected to the outside world. I'm fine with my 218 friends social networking here in my little corner of the world Companies-who-just-want-to-sell-me-more-stuff-I-don't-need. I'm just fine! Now leave me A-Lone.
Now here's a picture to remind me of what's good and lovely in the world.

And it don't cost a thing.  

Your moment of zen

Mondays can be harried and harassed. Time to get back to "the grind," the world of busyness beckons, wrapping us in a whirlwind of do-nexts. 

Perhaps that makes it even more important to sit and listen to the whispers in the wind...

(the path to Mt. Evans last October)

Inspired

A post or two ago I mentioned I was reading an autobiography of Oscar Wilde. It's dense reading so I am taking it slow, savoring the reflections on art and life that were so much a part of his daily diatribe. O.W. was a believer in art and beauty and his life reflected that belief at every hairpin curve of his impressive life. I am impressed by the depth of his belief.  As I read, I dig deeper to have my own writing reflect the beauty I want to see in the world and that I catch glimpses of as I make my daily trek through normality. Oscar pressed the bounds of propriety in his approach to life and his craft. He believed that literature was the "supreme art..." one that could "transform a painting into words, a life into an artifice."*

I too believe in beauty and love and art. I believe it has the potential to transform those who read it for good... or for ill. A teacher and I once had a discussion about the books she was recommending to her class. At that time she felt they would only read books they could relate to, stories that were spawned from authors who lived similar lives. At this point I offered a suggestion that went a bit against the grain of common knowledge. While I understood why she and her fellow teachers felt they needed to offer reading material that reflected the life kids knew in order to engage them, "How," I queried, "would they imagine more?" How do they imagine a different kind of life than violence and ugliness if all they read are books that have the same reality that takes place in their homes? If they never read a book like A Wrinkle in Time or War of the Worlds will they dream of the stars and what lies beyond? Would they create fantasies of grand adventures and exciting travels if they haven't read Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea or The Narnia Chronicles? No, I proposed, I fear they... you and I... would not. Your dreams and aspirations would remain within the realm in which they were created- a world of day to day reality which may include abuse, drugs, alcoholism and gangs.... (fill in the blank)

Too sad to even think about really.

So Oscar Wilde inspires me to do more than write about the day-to-day, regular occurrances. I am emboldened to "take on [the] mask" of the writer in order to speak truth-- a truth that I hope will challenge readers to search for more out of life than what is "normal".

What authors have inspired you?



*Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellman, p. 339.